


Reflections of His Insides

by UnoriginalAtBest



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anxiety, Body Dysmorphia, Body Image, Depression, M/M, Self-Hatred, deeply rooted self hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-21 22:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11366910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnoriginalAtBest/pseuds/UnoriginalAtBest
Summary: The mirrors tell a truth that Tyler Joseph has come to accept throughout his years of discovering the monster that lurks in his soul.





	Reflections of His Insides

**Author's Note:**

> This story means a lot to me. I've been through this, so it hits pretty hard.

Tyler looked in the mirror.

_What a joke. What a joke._

So he turned away. He threw on his clothes. He threw on his protection.

Then off to school he went. Down the sidewalk. Down the halls. Down to his classroom.

_Down, down, down._

Until he was so far down there wasn't even an "up" anymore.

Until he was so far down that he didn't even _exist_ anymore.

Because Tyler wasn't Tyler. Nobody was Tyler. Nobody. And Tyler was nobody.

But he was someone else on the surface.

* * *

Mirrors never quite fit for someone like Tyler. They never worked quite enough. All they did was look back at him with an image of inconvenience. They gave him this look; this identifying stare that poked and prodded at someone who he wasn't. Or someone he was. He didn't quite know.

But what he did know was that the image looking at him in the mirror, that wasn't him. It couldn't be. It simply wasn't possible for a person to look at themselves in the mirror and feel what Tyler felt at the image. This-

This...disgust. This putrid, awful disgust that dug holes in his skin like maggots. But the holes didn't appear in the reflection. Which was another reason why Tyler couldn't believe that this picture was Tyler. It might have been "Tyler", but it wasn't Tyler.

It was someone else. A clone, perhaps. Or maybe a view into another dimension. Or maybe, it wasn't a mirror at all, but rather all the "mirrors" Tyler had looked into were rips in the universe. Yes, that was most certainly more logical than seeing a reflection of a monster, yet when he would look down at his fingers, his creators, they would not have claws sneaking past the tips.

Just finger tips that held addicting writing utensils.

But that's just what he told himself to cope.

Because, logically speaking, the image in the mirror was Tyler. To everyone else that watched his reflection move about could all obviously say that there was no monster standing in the mirror. It was just a boy. A lanky teenage boy with large brown eyes and slender hands.

But to Tyler, those hands weren't slender. Those hands were large. They were monstrous, and they held claws that scratched the life out of everything they came in contact with. And Tyler wasn't slender, either. He was more than slender. He was skinny. He was skin. He was bone. He was the very face of death itself, and he didn't understand why people would compliment his "muscles" that he apparently got from playing basketball day in and day out.

Compliments didn't exist to Tyler.

And on the few occasions that they did he would simply thank whatever kind person decided to lie to him, and then sob in the bathroom by himself wondering how someone could think so highly of him.

They complimented his hair, after all. It was a God given miracle.

_How do they see something other than a charcoal covered heart unworthy of even the dirtiest of hands to hold?_

He doesn't get it. He doesn't see their perspective. It's like his mind is a brick wall to all things nice and clean. They can't pass through. They just get smashed on impact.

And so he was convinced.

To this plagued teenage boy he is nothing more than scum. He is lower than scum. He doesn't deserve basic love and care, or the feeling of someone telling you that you mean something. All he deserves is to be sent to hell.

He's an exception to recovery. The one who doesn't get better, because he doesn't deserve to get better. Because he deserves to hate himself. He deserves for mirrors to show him who he truly is; for them to place an image in front of him that depicts nothing more than the worst creature in existence.

He looks at his claws, his large, monstrous hands, his slender frame that looks as if he's starving, and he knows.

He knows in his heart and soul that _this_ is what is on the inside. It's what he truly looks like, and no one could ever convince him otherwise. The rest are all liars, but they don't even come close to the pungent, vile creature that resides in the deepest recesses of his mind. They don't know Tyler Joseph, because Tyler Joseph never existed.

He is a shell that is filled to the brim with everything that destroys a person. There is no saving him.

That is, until this little piece of sunshine broke through the surface of an inky abyss in the form of another human being.

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda wanna make this into a short little series that I will update every now and then.


End file.
